


Rituals & Transactions

by samcatburglar



Series: A Scale in the Breeze [1]
Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Implied Child Death, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25948498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samcatburglar/pseuds/samcatburglar
Summary: Xelloss finds a strange item in his travels, so naturally, he has to bug his favorite dragon. Little does he know, it leads to some rather unpleasant realizations on both of their parts.
Relationships: Filia Ul Copt & Xellos, Filia Ul Copt/Xellos
Series: A Scale in the Breeze [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055669
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	Rituals & Transactions

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a drabble for the July Slayers prompt of "Artifact" and I got carried away. In theory, it will be continued, but this is my first time doing something with multiple chapters, so I'm not sure how this is going to turn out lmao. I'm notoriously bad at plot/pacing, I just love dialogue and domestic bullshit between these idiots.

The young Miss Amelia did in fact have a point — high places were of great use, as Xelloss could see the entire layout of Meadowe’s Creek from his place atop this tree. He’d been there since around three in the afternoon, and he took simple pleasure in watching carts crawl about their humble dirt roads like so many ants, and for a while he found his mind tumbling through effervescent thoughts of how long mortals have built societies, how they’ve always found a way to flourish and grow, even when Nature Herself made it very clear she did not want them there. Great hurricanes, devastating floods. And yet here they were, existing. 

Maybe they were less like ants and more like cockroaches.

It eventually came time for lights to flare in each window, as evening draped its mantle across the landscape, but the Lesser Beast remained casually perched in place. Poor little cockroaches, afraid of something as simple as the dark. If only they knew of the monsters that crept in plain sight! That was much more terrifying, he thought. To pretend, to put at ease, only to strike when the moment was right. Fear mixed with shock tasted much better than fear mixed with tension. Idly he noted that his palette had become much pickier in the last few centuries or so, but he figured such refinement only made him a higher caliber mazoku than he already was. No, Xelloss Metallium certainly couldn’t be classified as a bottom-feeder.

So what about a tiny mortal settlement could possibly interest such a high-ranking mazoku as himself? Yes, there was a pleasant chill in the air and a hazy darkness on the horizon — but was there information to be gathered? Intel to be catalogued?

A certain dragoness and her son made it easy for that answer to be a greedy _yes._

Filia didn’t have a cart, but Xelloss could still pick out her silhouette anywhere, even without the stupid hat or ridiculous headdress. She was but a tiny pink speck, dappled with just the tiniest bit of mint, courtesy of Val’s hair. And he had picked this tree precisely because it stood at the edge of Whisperwind Forest, which bordered Filia’s homestead like a wall of evergreen guardians. Soon, she would no longer be just a speck, but a doll-sized delight.

And thus began her chores. He watched her fetch water from the well, heaving a large pitcher she no doubt made herself across the threshold. She shooed some geese, brought in some firewood. He liked watching her liked this — many a mortal and mazoku alike looked down upon hard labor such as this, but for Filia, he decided he very much enjoyed watching her in motion. She belonged that way. Dynamic and vibrant, not statue-still like the rest of her brethren had her believe was good and proper. Besides, she was very liberal with hiking her skirts up to step over some broken fences she was mending, and he figured he was allowed a certain degree of lecherousness, given his nature.

It was a lazy excuse and he knew it. But it was better than admitting that this was the first time a glimpse of a thigh ever had an effect on him. The fact that it was _Filia’s_ thigh made the situation all the more galling. And so rather than giving himself existential heartburn, he merely enjoyed the view.

When the sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, he watched Filia’s silhouette move through her upstairs window, and he swore he could hear the tiniest ring of a lullaby resting on the evening wind. He’s heard such a lullaby before, but it still impressed him that a voice capable of such shrill screams was also capable of weaving melodies so soft. He strained to hear more, but eventually followed her form as it disappeared from view.

He waited just a little longer for her to settle in for the evening, when dishes were done, when toys were put away, when everything was clean and tidy and ready for another day. And, finally, of course, when tea was about to be made.

Xelloss teleported directly next to Filia where she sat at her kitchen table.

“Finally, the adults can talk!”

Filia dropped the book she was reading and nearly tumbled out of her chair with the effort of trying to catch the falling book and pull her robe more tightly over her nightgown at the same time. Her face flushed to a delicious cherry color, heralding quite the scream on the horizon, but Xelloss was quick to place a single gloved finger on her mouth.

“Ah, ah! We wouldn’t want to wake Val, now would we?” he said, absurdly reasonable. “I take it he still has a bit of trouble staying asleep when you leave the room?”

Still red, the dragoness snatched his wrist with a vice-like grip and threw it away, predictably, like garbage. “Xelloss, what have I told you about using the _door_.”

How this woman managed to make a whisper sound like the most unpleasant screech, not even Xelloss could figure, which of course delighted him to no end. “Mn, to use one, I think! My, my, is your memory already fading? At the tender age of 802?”

“803,” she corrected testily.

Xelloss settled neatly in his chair, legs crossed. “803. My _mistake_ , Filly, do _forgive_ me.”

The former priestess growled something unintelligibly prissy, but Xelloss didn’t bother to make out words. She was already getting up to pour him tea, so it was obvious once again that she wasn’t going to throw him out of the house.

“…so. How was your day?” Xelloss twisted his ankle with glee. _Small talk. How terrible!_

Filia’s sigh made it clear she agreed with this assessment, but as she poured tea into two cups, she answered rather civilly, “Fine, just…busy.”

“Mn, as you always are.”

“Yes, well…” Her sentence trailed into the sound of dishes being placed on a tray. “Do you want the shortbread cookies or the gingerbread ones?”

A lazily evasive move on her part, but Xellos appreciated the effort nevertheless. “Ah, that depends on the tea, I think.”

She brought the tray to the table and placed it carefully between their two seats. “I wanted to use the last of the Earl Grey you brought last time.”

“You already used all of it?!” Xelloss didn’t attempt to hide the smug smile creeping on his lips despite his outcry of dismay. He’d brought enough tea to last a month, and it had only been two weeks since he was here last. _Someone_ had liked that tea _very_ much. 

“What?! You brought it to my house, I could use it as I saw fit!”

He leaned an elbow casually on the table, watching her with the most infuriating smile in the world. “I suppose that calls for shortbread, doesn’t it, Filly?”

She rolled her eyes, and when she retrieved the box of assorted-shaped shortbreads, made a point of throwing it at his chest like a child.

“Ow!” he whined, placing the box on the table and opening it like he always did.

And Filia ignored him like she always did, merely falling into her seat with a large sigh. That sound alone was enough to confirm that this was the first time she was sitting in at least six hours (the whole period of watching her since she had gotten home was merely extra information) and if she was making any attempt to hide her relief in sitting here with him, she was doing a very poor job of doing so.

He placed a piece of shortbread on her saucer. “I’ll see if I can get more. I told you it was good.”

“Hmn. Thank you.” She reached for the cream, and put just a splash in both of their cups. The perfect amount, he was loathe to admit. “I did go through it quite fast, didn’t I?”

“At this point I think you might’ve replaced your blood with tea.”

This elicited a soft huff of laughter from her nose, and Xelloss found himself immediately understanding why mortals described their organs as being tied in knots. For a while they stayed like this, quiet but comfortable in each other’s company. Filia stirred her tea with a drowsy distance in her gaze, and Xelloss watched the liquid swirl beneath her spoon. He watched her, too, of course. Her fingers drummed against her cheek and she yawned, exposing her sharp white teeth for a few moments before her mouth closed with a snap.

“Sorry. Fridays are always hard.”

Xelloss furrowed his brow. “…why Fridays?”

“Mn, because it is the end of the work week. It all sort of…catches up with you, I suppose.”

“Huh! Interesting.” 

He tucked that away into a file unofficially titled _Inane Things to Say To Convince People You’re Human_. He really should credit Filia as co-author to that file at this point, considering how many inane things she says to him. Not that he remembers all of what Filia says. That would be absurd. And such an absurdity abruptly reminded him of why he was here this time around, having inane conversations with an inane dragoness over tea and cookies.

“Well, then I’d hate to trouble you further…”

She gave him a very long side-eye. “You already showed up at my house unannounced without using the door. What could possibly trouble me any further?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really…” He glanced out the window casually, shrugging his shoulders just so. “If you’re too tired, I can ask someone else.”

Filia perked in her seat immediately. “ _Xelloss._ ”

Xelloss, in turn, perked up himself. “Very well, if you insist!”

He reached into his messenger bag and retrieved what looked like a small bronze sphere. It was around the size of an egg and covered in complex runes that wrapped around it in bands, but before the demon could even open his mouth to explain, Filia gasped and jumped up from the table with such erratic force that the teacups jostled against their saucers and spilled some of their contents.

“Get it out!”

“What, what is—”

“I said get it out!”

Xelloss was used to Filia’s hysterics, seeing as she displayed them quite often, but this was not the red-cheeked, conflicted anger of a repressed priestess. This was fear. No, this was _terror_. It blanched her features and choked her voice, and Xelloss’ mazoku palette ate so greedily at this feast that it made him a touch dizzy.

He opened one eye. Something was clearly very wrong, but Xelloss wasn’t just about to obey Filia Ul Copt on principle. Desperation of this caliber made this prime hunting territory for secrets, and so he merely leaned back in his chair like so lazy a cat, holding up the sphere for casual inspection. Filia eyed it with a wild, manic gaze, and he wasn’t sure if she was about to tear away the sphere from his hand or his throat from his neck.

Frankly, both prospects were intoxicating. And they brought up an interesting question. “If you’re so desperate to get it out of the house, why don’t you come and get it yourself?”

“Fuck you, Xelloss, fuck your questions, I’m going to—” The dragoness’ voice was tight with tears, but in a blink of an eye she was grasping the back of his chair and wrenching it backwards. A bit of tea sloshed out of the teacup Xelloss had been sipping from, and what giddy delight he felt hearing this maiden cuss like a sailor immediately fled, replaced instead with a rather fussy irritation.

“Hells below, Filia, just when I think you’ve begun to develop into something resembling polite company, you turn around and—“

“Well if you thought about someone else other than yourself for one _second_ of your life, maybe I would be motivated to be polite, but since you are a selfish bastard with no sense of decorum—”

“Decorum?! I have _plenty_ of decorum, _you’re_ the one stomping about like a—” She tipped the chair. “Alright, alright, fine! If it will get you to _shut up_.” He stood, slamming the half-empty teacup onto the table and deliberately doing so with such a force that it cracked its saucer. Eye for an eye, as it always was with them. Filia’s cheeks began to regain at least a little color.

“Oh good job, Xelloss, you broke a saucer. Are you happy now? Did that make you feel better, big scary mazoku man?” Filia watched him pass with her hands on her hips as she sneered at him.

“Yes it did, you witless, overreactive harpy.” Despite his ire, his answer was true. This was the Filia he knew: condescending, childish, angry, _alive_. He slammed the door open in a poor attempt to ignore how that thought kindled something very, very deep within the pits of Xelloss’ spirit, something that one could almost describe as _relief._

He was about to just stop at her threshold, thinking this would be enough, but he watched as Filia pushed past him with her robe wrapped tightly around her ample frame. She kept walking with no signs of stopping, steps long and ungraceful. At this point, Xelloss’ curiosity was growing stronger than any delight that would come from further flustering the dragoness. That, and this situation wasn’t quite flustering her. This tasted off, like just spoiled milk. And that was enough to begin tempering his anger, too. He just followed after her, both eyes open like those of a predator keenly stalking its prey.

She kept walking in silence, which was something else Xelloss disliked about this Filia. Where were her screams? Her useless chatter? Her stupid commentary about how it took so long for the leaves to regain their color this summer? His lip curled in dismay. A violent impulse to reach forward and rip her pretty blonde locks from her pretty doll head sent a shiver down his spine, if only because he couldn’t believe he actually _missed_ her wretched prattling.

Watching their surroundings helped to quell his instincts, keeping an eye out for intruders, animals, nosy neighbors — but it seemed only nightingales and crickets announced their presence at the moment, and soon Xelloss found himself falling into familiar, comforting habits. Other mazoku regarded travel on this plane to be something tedious, but Xelloss liked the sensation of chilled night air and sharp stormy gusts. Tonight the air was damp, and thus he watched with keen interest as the hem of Filia’s robe began to darken with the dew she caught from the wildflowers over which she was trampling.

When she abruptly stopped and turned to face him, Xelloss nearly pushed her over. Rarely caught on his literal heels, he blinked and reared back. Filia, however, was now calm despite the tears streaking her cheeks. Clearly, her relief from being away from the house far outweighed any disgust or shock at their close quarters, and Xelloss made no move to widen the gap.

“Sorry. That thing is just. I didn’t want it near Val, near my house, or anything that I owned.”

Xelloss made an obnoxious show of raising his brows. “Oh? Excuse me, what was that? An apology? From Filia Ul Copt? My, my, this thing must be quite the weapon if it prompted such an apology.”

“It isn’t a weapon!”

Disappointing. He angled further, “…a cursed item, then?”

“No, it’s— Well I mean—“ She glanced down at Xelloss’ messenger bag, pressing her thumb into her palm and swallowing hard. “Here, give it to me.”

Xelloss noted the angry red mark her thumb had left in her open palm and hesitated. For what reason, he couldn’t say. But Filia grew impatient, jutting her hand out for emphasis.

“Do you want to know what it is or not?!”

“Yes,” he answered at length, reaching into his bag. “But considering your little _outburst_ , this is clearly something with much significance to the dragon race. And as much fun as it would be to watch you potentially disintegrate upon contact, it would put quite the snag in my agenda to deal with your son’s retraumatization. Fusion magic, and all that.”

Xelloss wouldn’t be a good liar if he wasn’t able to lie to himself.

“Why would I want to touch something that would make me _disintegrate_ , Xelloss, gods above, do you think I’m an _idiot_?! Give it to me!” And before the mazoku could even being to display the bronze sphere in perfect butler-like fashion, Filia snatched it away in one swift, greedy movement.

“Dear oh dear, there’s no need to be so _vicious_.” 

Xelloss leered at her, taking quietly pleased inventory of the snarl twisting her mouth. It was very close, soft and pale beneath the moon. But before he could even register the impulse to bite it, he found his gaze dropping down to her hands. She was turning the sphere over in her fingers, and her blue eyes held a focus so sharp that they flashed like the hottest part of a flame in a hearth. Still, neither of them moved. He was so close that he could pluck those eyes from her skull and keep them as pretty little trophies if he wanted to — and he _did_ want to. But he knew death would kill the flame that made them so fascinating, and if he wanted to acquire two messy, fragile sacs of jelly, he would simply crack open some human and take theirs.

A twinge of anger pulled at his mouth. He was here for the artifact, not for _her._ Easily distractible was _not_ a common characteristic of his, but yet again, he finds this absolute mess of a dragon to be at the center of it all. Still, as irritating as this was, there was a certain degree of fascination darting about his person — it made his fingers twitch and his eyes glint. _Flummoxed. What a peculiar sensation_.

His voice was hushed when he asked her, “…I assume you can read it.”

“Yes,” she responded, voice similarly hushed.

“…what do they say?”

Filia’s chest swelled and shuddered with her breath. Xelloss exhaled in turn. Without pulling away from him, she murmured, “It’s better if I show you.”

And with this, Filia brought the sphere so close to her mouth that her soft, moon-pale lips only just pushed against its smooth surface, and Xelloss found his entire body seizing with pins and needles. He finally registered that impulse to bite at her mouth, but once more, he was interrupted, this time by the sphere itself.

Filia’s holy incantation drew a gentle white glow from the runes on the sphere, and with one final word, the glow arced outwards in graceful, complex rings that twisted and swayed against each other, blindingly fast at first, then slower. Xelloss had to tip his head back to watch as they continued this dance — he and Filia were at the center of this dance, with the rings extending for at least a yard around where they stood. The runes that were engraved in the bronze were mirrored in them, but as the twisting began to turn into gentle rotating, they began to fade, and instead tiny pinpricks of light began to twinkle around them.

Xelloss could appreciate beauty. It was one of his defining traits, despite being a mazoku. But his interest was piqued when he realized he was looking at a condensed projection of the night sky. It wasn’t the same one that hung above them now. This one was older, by 700 years to be exact, and it was the wrong season. Winter.

…and ultimately, harmless.

He returned his gaze to the dragoness, a disappointed tease already light on his tongue, but when he looked at her features, his eyes gained that rare, sharpened focus about them. Her expression was dead. Her eyes were just two messy, fragile sacs of jelly, and that didn’t just disappoint him, it _scared_ him. He’d seen that look once before, when Valgaav’s death was true and certain, and for a moment the world hung suspended as if dazed by its own salvation. The reasons behind his fear were inconsequential next to his violent urge to slap her, kiss her, push her, _anything_ to get that fire back in her eyes.

_One more round, Filia. That is how it always goes with us. One more round…!_

“So that’s it?” He demanded, unable to keep the edge from his voice. “You kicked me out of your house like a common stray for a constellation map?”

Filia didn’t rise to his anger. She merely nodded, and asked him in a hollow, empty voice, “You found this in a tomb, didn’t you?”

“And what if I did?” _Would you be angry? Please be angry. Be_ anything.

Filia continued to maintain her death-like stillness of posture and didn’t answer for what felt like eons to Xelloss and his quietly manic distress, but she eventually inhaled through her nose and rolled her shoulders in what he assumed was an attempt at self-soothing.

“It’s called a Sentinel. They used to be a gift for dragon hatchlings. When a mother found herself with child or was able to produce a clutch of eggs, she would gift her husband with a Sentinel to announce to him that they were going to have a child. And this was the first thing that was going to adorn their nursery.”

“But when our population started declining and…” A very obvious hesitation. “With the War of Monsters Fall ending the way it did, not only did female golden dragons become rarer and rarer, but our children began to die younger as well.”

“A dragoness would gift her partner with a Sentinel, only to miscarry, or to have the hatchling die prematurely. So they…they started to bury their hatchlings with them instead. And it happened so often that they eventually went from symbols of great joy to symbols of great tragedy. You didn’t see them in the temple, you saw them nestled in too-small coffins…!”

Filia’s voice began to pitch high with tears that couldn’t be smothered.

“So that’s why when you brought it into the house, I just— I couldn’t— Val is still so small, Xelloss, it just scared me so badly, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t—!”

Watching Filia thaw from her catatonic state to one of abject sorrow relieved Xelloss more than he liked to admit. He quietly began to feed on this shift in emotion, dimming his earlier sharpness of gaze to its more amiably observant status quo. That was why her earlier terror had been so immediately poignant — it was a _mother’s_ terror. That far eclipsed the fear he felt from her when her companions were hurt, or even when her own life was being threatened. This was unsurprising now that the pieces fit together. Still, Filia’s shoulders were heaving with great gasping sobs now, and while he was content merely watching this messy display of hiccups and babbles, something compelled him to extend his hand towards her again.

He hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to do with it now. In truth, he hadn’t thought this far ahead. Her golden hair hung across her features in a curtain of moon-blanched waves, and just like that, his hand now moved towards them. He didn’t brush it behind her ear or out of her face. He just took a strand and began to roll it between his thumb and forefinger, as though he was learning what hair was for the first time.

Filia, surprisingly, made no move to stop him.

“So not a cursed object…” he began, brows furrowed and eyes sharp with pensive thought. “…but an omen of death.”

She nodded.

“Well…” Where were his words? Charming and loquacious Xelloss, where were all the clever turns of phrase he had hoarded over the years? His tongue felt like lead in his mouth, but despite this deeply unsettling sensation, he said finally, “That won’t ever happen.”

Filia sniffled, looking up at him with those deadly large blue eyes, made all the more lethal by the tears refracting the light of the projected stars around them. “…what?”

Xelloss let go of that strand of hair in childish pique. This woman and her questions! “Oh please, Filia. Do you think the monster race would simply let this child of fusion magic _die_? When he comes of age, he will be _very_ useful to us, and I plan on pleasing my mistress most greatly when that time comes!”

The Lesser Beast sputtered these final words and feels every atom of his existence spike with fear. He just spilled all of his plans as though he were some air-headed mortal, all of his _secrets_ , and to this dragon no less! He didn’t care for the way Filia was watching him at all. It was a careful, discerning look, and what’s more, she was quiet. He felt exposed. He should run. He should kill her.

Because if Filia Ul Copt for one second believed that he was going to use her son for ill ends, she would’ve cut his heart out as soon as he said it. She knew he was lying even before he did, and that was so completely terrifying for Xelloss Metallium that he simply took a step back, tossed his staff into his other hand, and raised his voice to an erratically fragile version of his chipper polite tone.

“Dear oh dear, how disappointing! I was certain by your reaction that this was going to be something of use to the monster race, but I should’ve guessed that dragons would’ve made something so useless and sentimental. Thank you so very much for dragging me out into this field, this has been an hour of my life I will never get back. Farewell!”

And with the sharp sound of planes tearing, he left.


End file.
